Britain's austerity drive is finally reaching one corner of the small screen: the total pay of the BBC's handful of on-screen million-pound earners has dropped by a third to just short of £10m in the last financial year. Stars such as Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman are among those understood to be taking pay cuts during the period.

The BBC is expected to reveal on Monday that the amount it pays "top talent", earning £1m or more, has dropped to £9.7m in the year to March 2012, which compares with £14.6m the year before, with Norton reducing his £2m a year salary and the presenter of Newsnight dropping out of the million a year bracket.

However, because there are fewer than 10 individuals involved, the BBC will not say how many stars earned more than £1m last year – and is only expected to reveal that about 15 received more than £500,000 from the licence fee during 2011-12 – a drop from 19 in the previous year.

A cut to Norton's pay would leave Gary Lineker as the BBC's highest earner. The former England striker turned Match of the Day host earns an estimated £2m a year, but he is under pressure to cut his pay when his contract comes up in a year's time after fellow pundit Alan Hansen had a third slashed from his £1.5m-a-year deal in February.

Paxman, the best paid current affairs presenter, earned about £1m for his work on Newsnight and University Challenge, but a new deal signed at the end of 2010 and whose effect was felt during the last financial year, saw his income trimmed to about £800,000, firmly taking him out of the top bracket.

Even Jonathan Ross is believed to have had an impact on the figures. The man who was the BBC's top earner filmed his last Friday night show in July 2010, but with his overall deal estimated at £6m a year, the fact that he was working for the public broadcaster for four months in the year would have taken him over £1m and into the top bracket for 2010-11.

The BBC has been desperately trying to cut the pay of its top stars by at least 20%, as it tries to head off Conservative pressure to publish the pay details of all its household names and demonstrate to the public that it is responding to its own financial pressures that stem from the £145.50 a year licence fee freeze negotiated with the government in the autumn of 2010.

That has not stopped one or two people coming into the higher pay brackets, with will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas front man, earning a fee of about £500,000 for acting as a judge on the under-fire reality show The Voice. In general, though, the BBC appears to have held flat or brought down most of the pay packages of the best known names.

Although ITV is smaller, it pays its small roster of top stars more, with Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly – Ant and Dec – earning £5m a year each for their hosting duties on Britain's Got Talent and elsewhere. Alesha Dixon was poached by Simon Cowell to act as a judge on Britain's Got Talent, where she earned £350,000 against the £100,000 she received from the public broadcaster for judging Strictly Come Dancing.

There are few women among the BBC's top earners, although Anne Robinson, earned an estimated £1m a year for hosting The Weakest Link and Watchdog during 2010 and 2011. But the 66-year-old has cut back her work, and the broadcaster dropped the gameshow once she decided she would no longer present it.

Overall, the BBC is expected to confirm it spent about £202m on paying on-screen talent. The majority of those receiving cash are individuals paid the occasional £150 fee each time they appear as an expert on a news bulletin or Newsnight. That would represent a drop of about £10m on last year's £212.5m.

The unique position of the public broadcaster has meant that it has been able to talk most presenters down. Although few stars will talk about their pay – leaving figures to be pieced together through a mixture of off the record briefing and industry information – there are one or two that go on the record.

Norton, in an interview with the Daily Mirror last October, said: "Will I take a pay cut? Absolutely. God yes. There should be no special cases. The cuts at the BBC are across the board, which is how it should be." But one exception is Lineker, whose advisers have been hinting he could switch to join new Premier League broadcaster BT, once it starts airing games in 2013.

A constant stream of leaks suggest that the BBC's efforts to slash pay are continuing. Chris Evans, who earned an estimated £1.1m for his Radio 2 breakfast programme and his Friday night turns on The One Show, saw his pay drop in 2012 when the weekend edition of the BBC1 programme saw its airtime cut by half – and his £12,000 a show fee drop in line with that.

But loopholes allow stars to keep up appearances. Jeremy Clarkson is understood to earn less than £500,000 from the licence fee, but the Top Gear motormouth generates most of his income through a contract with the BBC's commercial arm that allows him to profit from the sale of programme DVDs, foreign sales and live shows. Those alone added another £2.14m to his income last year.

Norton also benefits from income generated by his production company, So Television, adding another £400,000 to his income.